Cellular telephony can now totally replace fixed lines

MOBILE NETWORK operators could steal customers completely from their fixed line competitors, according to David Robson of Burnside Telecom. His company produces a cellular phone which looks and acts as if it were a fixed line handset.

Burnside's P23 Desktop Mobile Phone functions like a regular telephone. You pick up the handset and dial a number just like an ordinary phone. Except there's no connexion to a land line, it works wirelessly over the cellular networks.

Consequently, the P23 is ideal for cellular refuseniks - particularly the elderly - since they don't even need to learn how to use the 'Send' button to make a call.

But Robson goes further. He reckons it can actually prove cheaper to makes calls via the P23. You can even program it to default to an emergency number (so you don't have to remember what the emergency services number is).

For the UK, Burnside compares a tariff from mobile operator, T-Mobile, against the incumbent telephone supplier, BT. He calculates a call using BT's Together Option 1 tariff during peak hours to a local or national number costs three pence per minute.

Via T-Mobile's Daytime 3000 tariff, the same call would cost a halfpenny. Calls to mobile phones are even cheaper - less than six pence per minute, compared to as much as 26 pence per minute.

One of the drawbacks with the P23 (which is based on a TC35i GSM module from Siemens/BenQ), is the cost - £148.99 (£175.06 Including VAT).

As Dobson points out, however, if you need a new landline from BT, it costs £99 and you may have to wait weeks for the installation.

Operators like Orange are starting to offer broadband to their existing cellular subscribers. If they took the Burnside approach they could even poach customers among landline users. So they'd only need to promote a three-play (telephony, broadband and TV). µ